Dear Editor: A radio talk-show host recently remarked that maybe users of social medial are discourteous and even cruel to others with whom they “communicate” because they lack empathy with someone whose emotional responses they neither see nor hear.

I seem to have been treated thus by a postal clerk who could hear me quite well enough.

The post office has been delivering to me for 14 years a small box of medication now worth about $100, at a cost of $12 for each shipment.

Every such shipment used to arrive within a day or, in adverse conditions, within two days. Recently, one such shipment took six days, so I phoned the postal outlet.

The clerk to whom I spoke told me if I wasn't so cheap, I would have had it earlier. He asked whether I expected him to drive it out to me.

I feel that was rude, especially since Canada Post has since told me that my $12 was the standard rate for standard one-day delivery. What Canada Post won’t tell me is why that particular delivery took so long.

They just said the clerk had apologized and they had “closed the file.”

In fact, that clerk has not yet apologized, or at least not to me — he might have grovelled abjectly to the higher-ups at Canada Post — so I don’t think the file should be closed quite so quickly.

It seems that the licence social media users feel they have to be discourteous may be spreading to areas of life outside the social media, as customer service appears increasingly anti-social, at least if we can judge from this incident.

Are even some small businesses associated with big corporations becoming so sure we will need them so badly that they can afford to let employees deal with customers as that employee dealt with me?

Comments

Comments

Your name*Email*Comment*

Recent comments

Logic problem

September 03, 2014 - 10:02

This is the dumbest thing I have ever read. Please read letters for merit before publishing.
I don't mean censoring ideas, I mean that when a letter is complete, unintelligent bull crap, don't publish it!
The writer is linking social media to a rude clerk because he heard on radio that social media makes people rude.
Allow me to demonstrate: Social Media makes people rude. This clerk was rude. Social Media made this clerk rude.
Can't you see how stupid that is and how unworthy of my bandwidth?

Advertising

Live blog sponsored by

Advertising

E-Edition

EMCA

ACE Awards

-->

Quick question: Voter intimidation

Some voters in the advance poll for the Liberal nomination in the Long Range Mountains district say they felt intimidated by ballot collectors coming to their homes unannounced to collect their ballots. Would you feel intimidated to vote in a ballot collector’s presence in such circumstances?